Derbyshire v Leicestershire T20 - Preview

Shivnarine Chandrepaul

There's not too much to say about today's Derbyshire display, which at best could be most appositely described as 'anaemic'. With the honourable exception of Wes Durston, whose return to form is welcome and nicely timed, there was little to celebrate in the batting.

After decent use of the Powerplay, the middle of the innings was neatly 'strangled' by the Leicestershire attack, before the end became something akin to one of the more manic scenes from the Keystone Cops. It wasn't especially good and was not very professional, only reinforcing the opinion of most supporters that our T20 cricket is a long way from redemption at this stage.

I'm not taking anything away from Anthony Ireland, an experienced bowler who seems to reserve his best efforts for Derbyshire, but he produced excellent figures of the kind that we can only dream of in this form of the game. Maybe next season...

In fact the bowling was fairly tidy and the spin bowlers all exerted a degree of control that was encouraging in a display that saw only three extras conceded in the innings. Yet it was too little, too late and anything under 150 on a ground like Chesterfield is always going to take some defending.

And so to tomorrow's game against Essex, that sees us welcome back Shivnarine Chanderpaul, who with Wayne Madsen, provides the experience in a young batting line up, which reads:

Borrington, Slater, Madsen, Chanderpaul, Elstone, Hughes, Cross, Wainwright, Palladino, Taylor, Footitt, Turner.

The thinking money would be on Mark Turner becoming twelfth man and it would be nice to report on a good batting effort in the next few days.

As for the visitors, their squad is:

Tom Westley

Nick Brown

Ravi Bopara

Jesse Ryder

James Foster

Ryan ten Doeschate

Greg Smith

Graham Napier

Tim Phillips

Reece Topley

Tom Moore

Matt Salisbury

No David Masters, thankfully, but there's a lot of talent in that squad and Derbyshire will need to be at their best to get anything from the game. Given that prediction of our form at present is a tough call, I am not going down that route. It didn't work today, that's for sure...

At our best, we will compete. Anything less, we will lose.

Can't say any more than that, at this stage.